Hard drive manufacturer Seagate has quietly updated its Barracuda 7200.11 series of hard drives to now include a 320GB single-platter HDD. Previously starting at 500GB, the 7200.11 family now includes a 3.5-inch 320GB drive with only one platter (model number: ST3320613AS), which features SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, 16MB of cache (no 32MB version available like the other models) and MTBF (mean time before failure) of 750,000 hours. The drive is said to have a slightly lower noise output and power consumption as well as improved read/write characteristics.

What rubbish. Cache is completely unrelated to size of disk. It is directly related to performance. What samsung has noted is that with 320GB density and faster data/seek times... they can get away with less cache and still have a great performing HDD. However, 32MB cache would STILL have been an improvement... but would have put the price up a bit... and on basic drives... margins are already very thin.

Well, I know what my next drive is going to be. Always liked the idea of a single-platter drive, but wanted to wait until Seagate came out with one, cause I've always liked their perpendicular recording -- though I guess that doesn't really matter on this drive, now does it?